Hands Off! The 100 Day Agreement Read online

  Hands Off!

  The 100 Day Agreement

  by

  Candy J. Starr

  Copyright Candy J. Starr 2014

  All rights reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Waking up with a hangover is bad. Waking up with a hangover in a strange bed is worse. Waking with a mouth like sandpaper and a head like a jackhammer and, the absolute worst of all, big holes in your memory over what you’d done, is absolute hell.

  It takes a fair bit to shame me. I’m not called Lucy Baker, queen of the party girls – or worse – by my enemies for nothing.

  Here’s the thing though, despite my reputation, I’m not usually a drinker. I’m sure as hell no saint but my vice of choice is sex and I like to be conscious and fully functioning for it. Three drinks and I’m numb from the waist down, and that takes all the fun out of it.

  I have a few life rules I live by.

  One: I don’t drink often and, when I do, it’s never the hard stuff.

  Two: I don’t sleep with guys on campus. Okay, that one has a few by-laws and sub-clauses because there are some really hot guys on campus and it’d be a sad day for them if they missed out on my special charms, but I definitely don’t sleep with guys in my faculty. Actually, that’s no hardship, it’s because I study art and, true to stereotype, the ones that are straight are normally douches. But some of them are bi and not so douche so I am making a sacrifice. Well, okay, most of the bi guys have slept with my mate, Tristan, and that leads to the next rule.

  Three: never, ever go where your friends have been. Mates before dates and all that.

  Four: don’t fall in love. Love is icky and messy and makes you act like a stupid fool.

  And the all-important number five: always play it safe.

  Which was what freaked me out. I’d been drowning my sorrows and went too far. Too many shots and I couldn’t quite remember what had happened last night. There was a bar then another bar and dancing and then leaving to come back here. Wherever “here” was. I hadn’t really been paying that much attention in the cab ride home.

  I mean, I was pretty sure that Pete? Paul? Whatever his name is was using protection but I wasn’t 100% sure and I had enough horrible, life-destroying shit to do without adding in a visit to the pox doctor. My head hurt too much to deal with that thought.

  Water splashed from somewhere in the apartment so I assumed Pete/Paul had jumped in the shower. The stripes of sunlight shining through the blinds highlighted a bunch of porn mags. An overflowing ashtray, pizza boxes in various states of decay and an empty Jack Daniels bottle sat beside them.

  Nowhere in that fetid pile did I see condoms, used or new. Not even a discarded box. Shitola!

  I needed to know. I could come straight out and ask him when he got out of the shower but that would be totally embarrassing and anyway, guys lie. They lie like big lying machines who’ve never had their mouth washed out with a cake of soap for being a fibber. And their everyday lying is just compounded when they have the potential of a girl freaking out over the truth.

  If the rubbers weren’t on the floor, where would they be?

  Maybe they were in the bed somewhere. Pete/Paul obviously wasn’t the kind of guy who gave a rat’s arse about hygiene. I pulled the covers off the bed to check. Nothing. Not one trace of condoms. But there was no crispy, crunchy dried-up wet spot either so that was a relief.

  I moved the bed out to see if they’d fallen behind it. Holy crapoli, here’s a bit of advice. Don’t ever, ever look beneath the bed of a guy you just shagged. It’s not pretty. It’s stomach-churning and gross and makes you totally rethink your life decisions.

  Still no used condoms though. I moved the bed back into place, willing myself to hold in the contents of my queasy stomach. I gulped in air until the feeling went away.

  I totally blamed Rebecca Forsythe for all this. Everything. Because she is the bane of my life and pretty much caused all the problems. I hate everything about her. I mean, even her name, Rebecca, not Becky, not Bec, not The Beckster but Rebecca, gives me the shits.

  I got offered the one thing I want more than anything else in life and, just because of stupid money, I couldn’t take it and that meant it would go to stupid, ugly Rebecca. Because Rebecca always gets what she wants.

  I didn’t even want to think about having to go into the faculty office and hand that premium opportunity to Rebecca Forsythe on a gold platter. I’d much rather look for used condoms in a filthy room.

  I kicked a shoe across the floor and it skimmed the piles of junk and knocked over a rubbish bin. Oops. Hope Pete/Paul didn’t hear that. Wouldn’t want him to think I’d wrecked his student chic decor.

  A rubbish bin? Hmmm, would he be the kind of guy who’d cross the room to put a rubber or five in the bin?

  I had to check it but I sure as hell didn’t want to rummage through there with my bare hands. I grabbed the JD bottle off the floor. I poked the neck of the bottle into the bin and used it to do a condom hunt. This guy had the worst diet possible – the trash was all Coke cans and pizza crusts and candy bar wrappers. Did the guy never eat real food? Where did he get those rock hard abs I remembered licking last night? He’d sure be sorry in a few years’ time when that diet caught up with him.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  He stood in the doorway with damp hair and a towel wrapped around his waist. I stood at the other end of the room, buck naked holding an empty Jack Daniels bottle with a condom hanging off the end. This did not look good but hey, he had used protection. Better to look like an idiot than to have some nasty disease.

  I dropped the bottle and grinned at him. Then I turned on the high voltage, more than most men can handle sex eyes. Just like I thought, that made him forget any compromising position I’d been caught in. The high voltage sex eyes can even overcome my morning after face and my morning after hair, maybe even my morning after breath.

  I moved over to him and hooked my fingers over the edge of the towel.

  My memory started to come back and it was hotter than hell. The things we’d done together, I’m surprised the furniture had lasted the night. Actually, when I looked at it, the light fitting did hang funny and some chunks of plaster had fallen from the ceiling to the floor. Oops.

  Pete/Paul’s towel slipped to the floor as my mouth met his. He didn’t kiss well but that wasn’t his special skill. I slipped my arms around his waist and licked his chest.

  “Oh, you are so nice and clean and I’m just going to dirty you up again.”

  He looked at me like a premenstrual woman looks at chocolate and his boner got all hard against my leg. He looked ready to eat me alive in all the best possible kinds of ways. And that had to be the greatest hangover cure of all time. He could take his time nibbling on every last bit of me.

  As his lips moved down my body, my phone rang.

  I’d ignore it but it was the ring tone for the One Who Cannot Be Ignored! Holy Granoli. I’d have to make up some excuse and get out of there. It’s not like anyone would believe the truth anyway. I mean, who in their right mind turns down the chance of hot morning sex because they have to rush off to see their grandmother. I’d take a raincheck on Pete/Paul and come back later to finish this off.

  CHAPTER TWO

 
; Of course, I went home to shower and change before I went to Grandmother’s house. I could just imagine her reaction if I turned up smelling of cheap sex.

  “Lucy, one does not visit one’s grandmother with cum stains in one’s skirt.”

  Not that I had cum stains in my skirt or that she’d ever even remotely think of saying that. I just liked to imagine her saying that kind of shit to amuse myself and, let’s face it, to stop myself from getting nervous. I’d even managed to put on something near respectable, with a high neckline and a hem that covered my knees.

  I’d have loved to have one of those proper grandmothers. You know, the kind that sit in their rocking chairs, knitting you stuff and telling you stories of the olden days. The ones that cook you hardy and wholesome food and tuck you in at night making sure the bed bugs don’t bite. Ah, that’d be so sweet.

  My grandmother was like that chick from Downton Abbey, except more stuck up and churchy. By churchy, I mean she judged everyone around as if they were the worst kinds of sinners but never judged herself. She sat on her huge pile of money instead of doing stuff like helping the poor and she’d kicked my mother out of home for marrying my dad. Dad wasn’t good enough for Grandmother. He was common.

  Still, if Grandmother wanted to see me, I had to go running otherwise I’d never hear the last of it. She probably just wanted to complain to me about something my mother had done. My mother and my grandmother hadn’t really talked since Mum and Dad got married and that made Mum the lucky one. So, if Grandmother had any complaining to do, she did it to me.

  “She’s a lonely old lady under it all,” Mum would say to me every time I had to visit Grandmother. “We are the only family she has.”

  “She’s a bitch,” I’d answer.

  “Yeah, well they say these things skip a generation.” Mum would laugh when she said that because she knew how much it annoyed me.

  I never understood how Mum could be so forgiving of Grandmother. I’d heard her on the phone a few times when I’d lived at home trying to bridge the gap between them but Grandmother would just shoot her down. All Grandmother wanted to discuss was the arrangements for my visit.

  I’d never have had anything to do with her at all if it was up to me but I’d visit Grandmother to make Mum happy – even if the reason Grandmother was so lonely was because of her own nastiness and need to control everyone around her. For major example, not forgiving Mum for marrying Dad.

  When I got to her house, Ballard, her butler opened the door. Ballard was the worst kind of butler, although I really only had fictional characters to compare him with. He was the kind of butler who went running to Grandmother with tales if he caught you sliding down the banister of the staircase or smoking cigarettes in the conservatory on those tiresome weekends at Grandmother’s.

  Ballard hated me and I hated him.

  “Ah, Miss Lucy, your grandmother is expecting you,” he said when I arrived.

  Of course she was expecting me. She was the one who’d ordered me here. Silly old fool.

  I nodded.

  “She said to show you through to the drawing room.”

  Oh great. Grandmother’s entire house reeked of floral stuffiness but the most stuffy and tiresome of all the rooms was the drawing room. And it had those uncomfortable chairs, which were like something out of the Spanish Inquisition. The fabric scratched your legs and then she’d be all like, “Lucy, don’t fidget.” How can you not fidget when you’re sitting on scratchy chairs?

  The chairs were “improving”. Everything in Grandmother’s house was “improving”. Personally, I didn’t think I needed improving. I was pretty damn awesome just the way I was.

  The dominating feature of the drawing room was a huge portrait of my Grandfather, glaring down on you with disapproval. It didn’t really suit all the chintzy chintz of the room but he glared anyway. I’d never met him in real life but, even from his portraits, I could tell he might be tempted to grin and break that stern face of his. Grandmother was never tempted to grin.

  When I entered the drawing room, Grandmother was in the middle of drinking tea. Things my grandmother liked included drinking tea, organising fundraising events for useless charities and improving me. Well, she’d actually stopped trying to improve me when I finished high school. She’d given me up as a lost cause.

  “Lucy, how nice to see you,” she said. I think she expected me to kiss her on the cheek but I just couldn’t. “Would you like some tea?”

  I’d prefer coffee but that would be near impossible. And, if I had to drink tea, I’d much prefer a big mug of the stuff not some dainty little cup and saucer that had a handle too small to fit my finger in and that I’d have to balance on my knee somehow without it spilling all over the priceless Turkish rug.

  “A glass of water will be fine,” I said. That was much safer than tea with its perils.

  “Ballard…”

  The butler returned with my glass of water on a silver tray in a scarily fast period of time.

  With that over, my grandmother smiled. It was a scary sight. She was not a woman who smiled naturally.

  “I’ll come straight to the point, Lucy. Some unfortunate rumours have reached my ears about your behaviour. I had hoped they would prove to be unreliable and would die a natural death but that doesn’t seem to be the case.”

  I gulped. Unfortunate rumours reaching my grandmother’s ears was never good. I wished she’d hurry up and get this over with. I’d act repentant then I could leave to do more fun stuff.

  “Don’t slump like that, Lucy. You are far too old to act like a sullen teenager. You are a young lady now.”

  I sat up but I couldn’t stop the sullen teenager attitude. In this room with the fancy gilding and the vases of massive, overblown blooms and heavy curtains dulling the light, all I could do was be sullen. The hands on the ornate mantle clock seemed to have slowed to a stop. That clock always moved slower than any other clock in the world, as though the hands became leaden with the weight of expectations.

  “It has caused me significant embarrassment. Do you have any explanation, Lucy?”

  I wasn’t sure which incident I was being accused of so didn’t want to answer. No point getting myself into a pile of shit that I didn’t need to. I looked up at the ceiling as though scanning my brain for possible wrongdoings.

  “Lucy, you cannot continue living the life you are living. It is unacceptable.” She sat down her teacup as though even that poor cup could not deal with the pure evil that was my life.

  Whoa, that was even more judgemental than I’d been expecting. My life was sweet. It suited me fine. Well, apart from the whole “no money to fulfil my dreams” part of it. That kind of sucked.

  “What exactly do you find objectionable?” I asked. Even if she spelt it out, I’d just agree, look humble then get the hell out of there.

  “I have heard that you are not as good as you should be. In fact, there are some very unsavoury things being said about you.” She pursed her lips until I thought her whole body would invert. “There was an incident at the Smythe’s party and then there was some talk of you appearing at the Crushington’s cocktail party with an unsavoury young man.”

  “Yeah well, you know how people talk…”

  My grandmother picked up her teacup, giving me a haughty look over the edge. Maybe if she tried being “not as good as she should be” she’d be a bit less uptight.

  Hells, I’d only gone to those boring parties because she’d said I needed to be seen in society. Maybe if people didn’t have such boring parties, I’d not have to make my own fun. And it was Billy Smythe who’d been involved in the incident with me and, seriously, if that rich old man hadn’t come outside nosing around, no one would’ve seen us in the pool. I tried not to smile.

  “Okay, I understand. I’m really sorry if I’ve caused you any grief. I hope you never hear these kinds of rumours again.” Wow, I’m good. Of course, I hoped she never heard them again. Wasn’t like I was saying I’d never do shit. Go me.


  She gave a little cough. Not a real cough but one of those fake coughs people give to say they totally don’t approve of what you are saying or doing. I usually ignore them. She looked at me a little too long and I wilted under her stare despite myself.

  “How are your studies going?” she asked.

  Awesome, change of subject. Although Grandmother really didn’t approve of my art studies. “It is so common,” is what she’d said.

  “It’s going great guns,” I said and she winced a little. “In fact, I should be going. I have a class in –”

  “It’s come to my attention that you have been offered a chance to study overseas. Presumably, that is a great honour.”

  I couldn’t meet her eyes. I stared at those treacle-slow hands on the clock, watching them try to grind their way around the face. I would not show defeat or upset. I would not let her know my true feelings or she’d use them against me.

  “It’s true but, of course, I can’t take it.”

  I said it smooth and easy without even the slightest crack in my voice. This room was far too stuffy. Why didn’t she ever open a window? I needed to get away from there.

  “Why ever not?” she asked. “You know, if it’s a case of money…”

  She didn’t finish that sentence but she didn’t need to. I couldn’t ask her because she’d say no just to see me suffer. Not that she didn’t love me in her own, tightly compressed kind of way, but she would use me in her schemes to hurt Mum just for her own pleasure. And she’d give me a lecture about having to work for the things you want. Because that was “improving”. . Like I’d never had to work for anything I had.

  “I have plenty to do here,” I said. “It’s not like Italy is going anywhere.”

  She laughed again. Like someone crumbling dry paper.

  “I have an idea that could benefit us both.”

  I have to admit, the look I gave her must have had an awful lot of suspicion in it. No agreement that she’d offer would be good. But, still, I was curious. I wanted to go on that exchange with every fibre of my being. If there was any way possible that didn’t involve screwing over my parents, I’d take it.